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What Advertising Works Best!!

06-07-2012, 10:28 AM

Hello Fellow Gardeners,

Be warned, this will be a little long-winded but well worth the read

I have recently partnered with a long-time friend of mine in a landscaping company. He has all the experience in doing the work and I have more experience in making a business run more efficiently. Things have been going very well but I am getting tired of the trial and error marketing strategies. I can no longer justify throwing money away on a marketing idea with nothing more than my fingers crossed that I am going to see the kind of return from it that I am expecting.

With my background and education in business, I have learned many tricks that allow me to know (about 99% accuracy) exactly which advertising methods work best, how much you can expect to earn for each dollar spent in advertising, and which advertising methods are not returning any significant gains. With large, publicly traded companies this is easy because they are required be SEC to publish their financial records and I have easy access to the data I need to complete these analysis. However, there are no landscape maintenance/gardening companies who are publicly traded, therefore, that data is not accessible.

Unless I can convince the members of this forum to share this data with me. I understand that financial records are highly sensitive and typically not something that most business owners are happy just handing over, especially to someone who could be their competition.

So, here is what I will do to try and convince you to share that information with me. Whatever my findings are, I will re-post them here on this forum for all to see. I will be able to tell you things like; how effective is advertising the phone book, how effective is advertising on craigslist, how effective is advertising on Yelp, etc. I will also be able to tell you things like; if I spend $100 on google ads or facebook ads or yelp ads, how much money can I expect to earn. I can tell you things like; if I reduce my advertising budget by $x amount, how much less will I earn. I can tell you things like if I have only $100 to spend on advertising where should I spend that $100 to get the most return.

I will make sure to take any identifying data out of the reports that I re-post here on the forums to make sure that none of your competitors can see how well you are doing. I will do everything I can to make sure that anything that I wouldn't want someone to see about my business is not identifiable.

If you are willing to provide me this data here is what I will need to provide accurate results: I will need 6 months of gross revenues along with specific marketing expenditures. For example, if I was submitting I would say in April revenues were $10,000. I spent $150 on yellow pages, $150 on SEO, $100 on Yelp Ads, $250 on Google ads, and I posted on Craigslist 3 times per day. If the marketing is not broken down like that the results will not be accurate. I will also need at least 20 companies to participate. That will provide me with enough data points to ensure accurate test results.

Once I have the data I need it will take me probably about one month to compile everything and run the necessary analysis to determine the results.

If you are interested in volunteering data for this project please forward the data to my email address m_benge@hotmail.com. If you know anyone else who is not on the forums that may be interested in participating please pass on my information to them.

Thank you and I look forward to hopefully working with many of you on this project.

Collect all the data you want, I seriously doubt anyone here will apply.

Do good solid work at a fair price and word of mouth will grow your company better than any paid advertising. This is a blue collar field even if you grow a huge and prosperous business it's still just that. Time to just get dirty! Lol

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You'd really have to break it down, you cannot just figure which method of advertising is best, to start, you would actually have to focus on the content of all the ads being sent out. Not to mention people are different all across the world.

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You'd really have to break it down, you cannot just figure which method of advertising is best, to start, you would actually have to focus on the content of all the ads being sent out. Not to mention people are different all across the world.

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If we were selling a product this might work. Unfortunately are work is seasonal and serviced based. I can expect to make 3 to 6 x's my june revenue in march and oct. Advertising wouldnt make a difference. It wouldnt convince people to get mulch in the middle of the summer or a fall clean up before the leafs fall.

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You'd really have to break it down, you cannot just figure which method of advertising is best, to start, you would actually have to focus on the content of all the ads being sent out. Not to mention people are different all across the world.

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I can no longer justify throwing money away on a marketing idea with nothing more than my fingers crossed that I am going to see the kind of return from it that I am expecting.

Can you ever do more than this?

Once you find something that works a little, you can then try to improve upon it a bit, but there are so many variables out there how can you ever guarantee to hit your target your first shot, every time?

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I spend 9 dollars a week, in the local penny saver. I have over 40 customers, make aver 4000 a month, work alone. I try to give each customer the best service Ipossible can, and make each of feel as they are the most important customer to me. (yes even the guy with the trashy yard and bad attitude) I get refferals from current customers, I get calls from my advertising, and sometimes from the cards I leave laying around. I spend 10 dollars per month on website, and have gotten calls from people who are willing to spend more money than average on work. What works for me may not work for you, my neighbors son does nothing but cold calls to businesses, and makes about 6K a month. He is one of those people that you feel like giveing your 18 yo daughter to with no thoughts that anything bad would happen, and he does great work.

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I mailed out 15 thousand postcards, at $5000.00, with the same results as you.

WOW!!! what did your postcard look like???? If you spent 5k on mailing these postcards why didn't you hire a professional graphic designer?!?!?!

At that rate you could have called me and I would have my company set you up a website and drive thousands of visitors to your website with a decent conversion...It would definitely land you a good handful of clients every month for years to come.....

Next time, I would suggest hiring a professional before spending that kind of money.